MOTHER - this is korean. pretty great. about a dumdum's mum who does what she can for her offspring. beautifully shot and acted. great script and editing. will fuck with your head. check it out!

THE BIG HEAT - this was pretty great and i didn't know it was directed by fritz lang. some very fritz-langy shots but actually great performances by the cast including a donkey-looking young lee marvin and a fantastic gloria grahame-- not a great beauty but she delivers awesome line after awesome line. was this the last "official" film noir? it's from 1953, pretty late for this type of movie, which confused me at first (though some characters make a point of highlighting that-- "this country is changing"). loved the fred flinstone steak.

SCANNERS - not the first time i've watched it but i'm doing a little cronenberg retrospective and it looks better on rewatch. this was the second movie i watched in this series, a bit out of chronological order but eh. what a great fucking story. yeah, cheaply shot, okay, but it preludes stuff like videodrome, for example. i'd say cronenberg was cyberpunk before the cyberpunks.

RABID - i couldn't get a hold of SHIVERS so i got this as a starter for the cronenberg binge. i've seen it before but it was fucking great again, and so was marylin chambers. a pity that she never made more mainstream movies, had troubles, and died early

THE WHITE RIBBON - michael hanneke's original script and it's excellent. in gorgeous black and white. i love it how he always presents you seemingly normal people and then he shows you their vile and nasty side. at this he never fails. this time he takes on an early 20th century northern german village-- peasants, burgers and nobility included. wonderfully done. has some horrid images and situations but they are worth the pain.

SHADOWS AND FOG - woody allen's homage to early film noir (speaking of fritz lang). it does feel like a filmed play (it's the dialogue that does it) but it was great anyway, i loved it, all except for mia farrow-- i don't know what he saw in her, but whatever, the movie still works and it's great.

JACK SMITH AND THE DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTIS
since it's hard to get a hold of jack smiths' movies i watched this-- and now i know why it's so hard-- most of them don't exist as "movies" proper. great fucking little documentary. now i understand john waters much better-- and i think i know where the raping monster lobstora came from. great stuff. all a bit tragic in the end. but great film & material & starter point for looking at more of his stuff.

DIABOLIQUE - the original one! of course. curious how the character of the benevolent cop is such a trope in french film. is that because they trust their government more? (e.g. compare vs. the big heat). anyway, great fucking movie, worthy of hitchcock and then some, and only later i realized henri-georges clouzot also directed THE WAGES OF FEAR, which is fucking amazing, but a totally different kind of movie.

Quote:

Originally Posted by evollove

Has anyone seen BLUE JASMINE yet?

not yet, no. comes out on disc in january. i've seen the trailer though and i'm really looking forward to it.

SHADOWS AND FOG - woody allen's homage to early film noir (speaking of fritz lang). it does feel like a filmed play (it's the dialogue that does it) but it was great anyway, i loved it, all except for mia farrow-- i don't know what he saw in her, but whatever, the movie still works and it's great.

Oh neat. I get to be a know-it-all.

It DID start as a play, either called "Death" or "God." I forget, though I'd bet on "Death." He wrote both in the mid-70s, I think. I haven't read it in a long time, but I seem to recall the play is basically the first scene of the movie, where a vigilante tries to enlist the Allen character.

It DID start as a play, either called "Death" or "God." I forget, though I'd bet on "Death." He wrote both in the mid-70s, I think. I haven't read it in a long time, but I seem to recall the play is basically the first scene of the movie, where a vigilante tries to enlist the Allen character.

Good eye. We both win a prize. Of nothing.

yeah it was "death", it's listed in the credits, but you get that sense from the dialogue from the opening scene. awesome little movie, and an excellent cast even for tiny roles. i watched it twice on the same day. btw, the guy who dubbed woody allen in french was excellent, ha ha.

THE BIG HEAT - this was pretty great and i didn't know it was directed by fritz lang. some very fritz-langy shots but actually great performances by the cast including a donkey-looking young lee marvin and a fantastic gloria grahame-- not a great beauty but she delivers awesome line after awesome line. was this the last "official" film noir? it's from 1953, pretty late for this type of movie, which confused me at first (though some characters make a point of highlighting that-- "this country is changing").

Spot on. One of my all-time faves. Fritz Lang at his most pissed off. Gloria Grahame steals it for me. "Neat. Early nothing." The scenes with her after she's been disfigured are about as noir as noir gets. Although Kiss Me Deadly was 1955 so it isn't the last - although personally I think it's the best.

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loved the fred flinstone steak.

I always laugh at that bit. Did you know the actress playing the wife was Marlon Brando's sister?

Another bit of trivia, the scene at the end of Mean Streets when Harvey Keitel gets killed, the guy in his apartment is watching the wife's death scene in The Big Heat.

I just noticed THE BIG HEAT is on TCM tomorrow, along with a ton of other noirs. Bullets Or Ballots (1936), Little Caesar (1930), White Heat (1949), etc. A smorgasbord of shadows, venician blinds, guns, and femme fatales.

Spot on. One of my all-time faves. Fritz Lang at his most pissed off. Gloria Grahame steals it for me. "Neat. Early nothing." The scenes with her after she's been disfigured are about as noir as noir gets. Although Kiss Me Deadly was 1955 so it isn't the last - although personally I think it's the best.

I always laugh at that bit. Did you know the actress playing the wife was Marlon Brando's sister?

Another bit of trivia, the scene at the end of Mean Streets when Harvey Keitel gets killed, the guy in his apartment is watching the wife's death scene in The Big Heat.

yeah i knew who jocelyn brando was but the weird thing is that i had learned it only a few days before while looking up info on jack smith (they were born in the same month, many years apart).

it was telling, i mean, i got it was from the 50s when bannion gets home and his wife is everything a 50s housewife should be-- she stretches the budget to afford steak, cooks it great, takes care of her kid, but can have fun too (drinks his beer and smokes his cigarette and i forget when there's some coded talk about fucking). superwoman! had to be the 50s, though the movie looked 40s.

gloria grahame steals the show of course but i didn't know until i read it later that in real life she was a bit of a pervo who fucked her stepson when he was 13-- and years later married him! ha ha ha. of course we don't look at predatory women the same way as we do men, i mean, i wanted nothing more at 13 than to bang some experienced lady, but still, so fucking wrong. eh, artists!

my wife sez she also played a morally dubious character in oklahoma, but i don't think i'll be watching that any time soon as musicals do to my nerves the same thing as the sound of forks scratching plates. but i expect to find her again as i'm lining up a little nicholas ray mini-festival (it was the son of nicholas ray she fucked and married, ha ha ha. owwwww!)

mean streets: i'll have to see it again at some point. i haven't in a long time because when i first saw it i thought it a bit overrated-- but i'd like to revisit it at some point

Quote:

Originally Posted by evollove

I just noticed THE BIG HEAT is on TCM tomorrow, along with a ton of other noirs. Bullets Or Ballots (1936), Little Caesar (1930), White Heat (1949), etc. A smorgasbord of shadows, venician blinds, guns, and femme fatales.

sweet!

EDIT --> here another weird concidence in my life right now: i was re-watching small time crooks yesterday and somewhere in the middle of it the woody allen character and his wife's cousin may are hanging out and watching a crime movie (just like demonyo said the character in mean streets, ha ha) . i just now realized (from wikipedia) it's fucking WHITE HEAT. which i should add to my list, even if it's not "a sign." but maybe it is, ha ha ha.

gloria grahame steals the show of course but i didn't know until i read it later that in real life she was a bit of a pervo who fucked her stepson when he was 13-- and years later married him! ha ha ha.

Wow. I never knew that.

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i expect to find her again as i'm lining up a little nicholas ray mini-festival

She's amazing in In a Lonely Place. It's a shame she never got the same iconic status as some other actresses in her day. She never had the classic Hollywood glamour queen look but could certainly out act most of the ones that did. I'm sure I read somewhere that her reputation was only really established later on when the nouvelle vague started namechecking her. Although she did win an oscar earlier in her career.

EDIT: Just found this quote from Truffaut: "It seems that of all the American stars Gloria Grahame is the only one who is also a person."

I just saw The Hobbit part 2, it's good, maybe the best of the Jackson/Tolkien films so far. Still too long though, the last third is kind of a bit boring, it's basically a pretty average chase sequence after one of the best chase sequences I've seen outside of a martial arts movie (the one with the barrells).

i remember elisabeth shue was super hot but otherwise i thought that movie was shit. i didn't see it at the movies though, but still. shitty third-rate male fantasies.

I thought it was a good movie. It is not the subject matter I normally give a fuck about, cuz who gives a shit about drunks/druggies and the problems they bring on themselves, but it was an interesting study of two people stuck in shit, one seeking to end it, and one seeking to have/provide company while the other ends it. My friends who love that movie the most are the heavy drunks though....
Drunks love movies where drunks get to act out and no one stops them.

right, but that's my whole point-- it's not a study but a fantasy. it's not realism or neorealism or psychologically "true" in any other way than accurately reflecting a male fantasy. which is the same as (for example) death race 2000, which i like a lot, but death race 2000 doesn't pretend to be anything else.

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Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

Drunks love movies where drunks get to act out and no one stops them.

i'm sure they also love movies where drunks never suffer from whiskey dick! ha ha ha!